VentureBeat

updated with info on who is behind Triad

The Federal Communications Commission has gotten bids for more than the minimum of $10 billion it had set for its 700-megahertz spectrum auction, and there’s word that AT&T has been an active bidder.

Google and Verizon are also assumed to be bidding on a chunk of the spectrum. The auction is significant, and closely watched in technology circles, because it could open up innovation in the wireless industry — providing the chance to a provider like Google to bypass the powerful carriers.

One of the relatively unknown accepted bidders in the auction, Triad 700, of Silicon Valley (Burlingame, Calif.), however, has quietly raised $90 million from investors, VentureBeat has learned, but neither the company nor its investors are returning our calls. The $90 million is a piddling for the billions of dollars that are needed to bid successfully in this auction, but perhaps the company is leveraging it with debt. Triad’s backers are traditional venture capital firms, including Battery Ventures, Highland Capital, Ignition Venture Partners and M/C Venture Partners. Anybody know anything more about this company?

Update: The rumors are rolling in. One source says Triad is run by Sanjiv Ahuja, former chief executive of Orange; we haven’t confirmed.

Update II: Dan Primack follows up, and finds that the Triad principals are Barry Lewis, Craig Viehweg and John Mason, who once were part of the executive team at rural operator Triad Cellular, a Silicon Valley company bought last year by Western Wireless. They’ve participated in nine spectrum auctions, according to Primack.

Going.com, a Boston-based networking site centered around urban events, has grown rapidly since it launched in June of last year.

The site, which tomorrow changes its name to Going (away from HeyLetsGo.com), says it has 220,000 unique monthly visitors to the site. The numbers, while not mind-blowing by any stretch, are enough to look around and ask why other sites haven’t sewn up this events area. Going lists events in three cities; it launched in Boston six months ago, and more recently New York and San Francisco. It tries to mobilize a community around each event. We tinkered with it today, before the relaunch tomorrow, and it is intuitive.

One factor keeping this and other similar sites from explosive viral growth is the number of old-economy competitors, from publications like the Boston Globe, to the New York Times and the Village Voice — and as events go, old-fashioned event-planning over the phone.

Also, Going’s chief executive Evan Schumacher says no other Web site has done the hard work of engaging with event promoters in local communities. Going, which focuses on answering the question “What should I do tonight?,” has targeted top event organizers in each city and encouraged them to invite their contacts to events using Going. You’ll see some events, like this one for Klaxons, with more than a thousand people responding to the invites and registering. If respondents express interest in going to an event, their photos show at the bottom of the event page, with links to their profile.

As for competition, you’ve got JudysBook, which has yet to have real traction, and Yahoo’s Upcoming.org, which is still larger than Going, but limited to the techie crowd. You’ve got Yelp for information about restaurants and bars, and you’ve got MingleNow, a site that revolves around tequila-filled night clubs, and Down2Night, which is mainly texting event information to your cell phone. You’ve got Zvents for an agenda of events in your region, but much less oriented around people (update: forgot to mention Eventful.com, which is similar). And you’ve got various invite services, but these tend to be more for personal parties or occasions. Facebook’s community is still centered around colleges, even if it has branched out.

Going has hired editors to pick and profile specific events for each city, and then tries to encourage user participation. Any event can be featured, from Playboy parties to art gallery openings and charity events. The targeted community is the out-of-school crowd, broadly the 20- and 30-somethings.

The company is backed with $3.5 million in venture capital from General Catalyst Ventures and Highland Capital. George Bell, of GCV, was co-founder of Excite, and Bob Davis, of Highland was co-founder of Lycos.

JetBlue has partnered with Going.com promote alternative rock tours (The Teddy Bears in San Francisco and NY, for example), and JetBlue’s new air service to San Francisco.

After talking with Schumacher, it’s clear he wants Going to be the Facebook for city events — replicating Facebook’s success of matching online interests with those that exist offline. If it executes, this site could go somewhere, but we’re still not certain how viral such a site can be. After all, the point is not to hang out at a site about events, but to actually go to the events. Screenshots of an event, and a profile, below.

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GoFish, a video-sharing site much like YouTube, has acquired another video site, Bolt, to save that company from lawsuits that threatened to sink it.

The $30 million transaction, first reported by the NYT, is reportedly being used by New York’s Bolt to pay a settlement of “several million dollars” to Universal Music Group, which had sued Bolt for copyright infringement. (See merger filing here)

Thus ends the topsy-turvy ride of Bolt, the company started in 1996 to target teenagers, and once backed by investors like Highland Capital, America Online, and Oak Investment with more than $66 million. It had even filed to go public in December 1999, with only $4 million in revenue and no profit — just as the dot-com meltdown began. It was forced to pull its IPO.

So co-founder and chief exec Aaron Cohen and co-founder Lou Kerner bought the company back from investors in 2004. Which is why Cohen tells the Times: “This deal is economically painful to Bolt shareholders…It is setting a precedent that companies that violate copyright at minimum risk litigation.”

Bolt apparently had revenue of $7 million by the end of last year. It had 5.3 million users in the U.S, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

GoFish, a two year old San Francisco company, went public last year through a reverse merger, so called because it merged with company that was already publicly traded but had no operations. GoFish has little, if any revenue, but has a market value of $134 million. GoFish.com had 1.4 million users in December.

Cohen and Bolt president Jay Gould are now involved with a project, called WikiYou, which has received seed funding from First Round Capital and Mayfield Fund, reports NewTeeVee.